An April Fool's research
paper (Steve Mann,
MIT E15-389,
Saturday, April 1, 1995).

Scientists Discover New Particle

No such thing as light

Scientists who have been debating for some time as to whether light is a
particle or a wave, have suddenly realized that the issue is a moot point
because light does not, in fact, exist at all.

Light does not exist, apart from darkness; light is merely the absence of
darkness.

For example, the sun does not produce light, but, rather, has an
attractional force that draws in particles of darkness, called ``darkons''.
When the earth turns toward the sun, the darkons are drawn away, leaving
behind light, except in areas where the darkon field is obstructed by
trees, buildings, or the like. The areas in which the darkon field is
obstructed are known as ``shadows''.

Flashlights don't flash

Darkon fields can be generated artificially, by devices known as
``flashlights'' which generate a field that falls off inversely as the
square of the distance from the source, so that the effect is mostly local.
Further from the flashlight, the darkon attracting field is weaker, leaving
behind more darkons, so that those areas remain largely dark.

The darkon field produced by a flashlight eventually becomes weak, even
close to the source, and this is because the little cans inside the
flashlight have become full, and need to be discarded and replaced (much
like vacuum cleaner filter bags).

The cans, known as ``batteries'', have two markings on them, one
called ``+'' and the other called ``-''. Particles, known as ``holes'',
flow from the ``+'' to the ``-'' through the darkon attractor (called a
``light bulb''), causing it to draw in darkons. The flow of holes from
``+'' (hole surPLUS, meaning more holes), to ``-'' (minus, meaning less
holes), is called ``electric current''.

Some of these cans can be made to work again by connecting them to a
hole-pump, called a ``battery charger''. The battery charger requires
an external connection into an outlet that most people have in their
homes.

There are 2 theories explaining how battery chargers work:

The outlet allows homeowners to use these cans that are, in
a sense, full of darkons, to pump dryness particles from the
ocean, up a network of smaller and smaller rivers, and eventually
into the air.
Strictly speaking, the cans are not really ``full of darkons'', but,
rather, exist in a state where all the holes have gone from the ``+''
to the ``-'' side.

One can loosely think of the ``battery charger'' as
a pump that sucks all the darkons out of the battery, the
flow of holes being reversed from ``-'' to ``+'', by virtue
of the tendency of dryness particles (absence of water) to want to
rise from the ocean, up waterfalls, past large turbines.

Lights that *do* flash

The term ``flashlight'' is totally wrong for these devices, because they
usually produce light that stays on constantly, and doesn't, in fact,
flicker or flash like the turn signal of a car
or the flash on a camera as the name might imply. Thus they should
be called ``constant-on lights'', not ``flashlights''.
Darkon theoreticians have often been
confused by the trend to call everything by its opposite (to use words
like ``light'' to indicate the absence of darkons, words like ``electron''
to indicate the absence of holes, and words like ``water'' to indicate the
absence of dryness). Many darkon theoreticians even sustain the crazy
notion that electric current goes from ``-'' to ``+'' because they are
thinking about electrons which are the *absence* of holes.
(If you're not a darkon theoretician, you've probably heard
it stated "holes are the absence of electrons".)

Flashlights, in the true sense of the word ``flash'', were made practical
by Harold ``Doc'' Edgerton. These
devices use the flow of holes from ``+'' to ``-'' to induce a lesser
flow of holes from the ``+'' to the ``-'' side of another device,
called a ``condensor'' (or capacitor). The condensor condenses this
difference in holes from the battery. While there are fewer holes
displaced in the condensor that in the battery from where the difference
was derived, they come across much harder when condensed, and if you have
ever put a screwdriver across a charged condensor, you know that perhaps
the end can be blown off the screwdriver, because, while the number of
holes flowing is small, they really ``want'' to flow. The extent to
which holes ``want'' to come out of the hole-surPLUS (``+'') wire and
go into the ``-'' wire, is called the ``voltage''. Doc Edgerton's
condensors were typically operating at 4000 volts, and sometimes when
they went defective, they'd explode and leave large dents in the ceiling.

Now when the condensor is full, it can be used to create a sudden
darkon field of very brief duration but great strength. Darkons are
attracted in a quick burst, much like air is briefly attracted when
you open a vacuum packed container, or a vacuum-sealed jar of jelly.
In fact, the sound that the darkon-sucker (called a ``strobe'') makes
when it is trigged (``flasher''), is a lot like the sound you hear when
you open a vacuum sealed jar.

Darkon particle launchers

There are also devices that repel darkons, and people refer to the
repelling of darkons as ``shooting''. Darkon practitioners sometimes
say ``I'm going out on a shoot''. Devices for shooting darkons come
in various forms, from the simplest ``point and shoot'' to the 35mm
semiautomatic. The ones called ``point and shoot'' are so-called
because they are fully automatic. Darkon shooters (known as ``cameras'')
sometimes come with built-in darkon attractors called ``flashes'', so
that they can launch and receive darkons simultaneously. Now some
people like to be shot, while others do not, and this has seldom been
a problem with human-operated darkon shooters, because each situation
can be easily negotiated (between the person doing the shooting,
and the person being shot) as it arises.

Darkness and evil

However, a few years ago, a darkon theoretician was in a gambling casino,
and noticed that, on the ceiling, there were numerous mysterious
spherical objects -- ceiling domes of wine-dark opacity. He asked
one of the employees what they were, and the employee told him
that they were light fixtures. However, he was kind of curious why
they were not producing any light. Gambling casino operators, afterall,
do not always tell the truth, so he was wondering if they were really
dark-fixtures instead of light-fixtures because they looked kind of dark.

It could be, thought the darkon theoreticians, that the casinos were
in the darkon-laundering business, shooting all those darkons at people
who came to gamble there.

That idea was not particulary bothersome to the darkon theoreticians
becuase they didn't go to gambling casinos that often, and didn't
have much sympathy for professional gamblers -- modern equivalents of
Al Capone who spend most of their lives there.

The casino operators regarded the darkon theoreticians as ``paranoid'',
and told them so in no uncertain terms. However, ironically, when the
darkon theoreticians would take out their darkon-shooters (``cameras''),
the casino operators became very concerned. The casino operators
calling the darkon theoreticians paraniod was the pot calling the
kettle black.

The darkon theoreticians also noticed some dark windows in automatic
teller machines, and wondered what those were. Afterall, another
theoretician had established that money is the root of all evil:

$$money = \sqrt(evil)$$,

and so it was not surprising that banks
might also be in the darkon laundering business, secretly shooting
darkons at innocent patrons of their establishment.

Many of the darkon theoreticians were from MIT, so they were quite
disturbed by the
ceiling domes of wine-dark opacity installed at the
MIT bookstore (``Coop''). These looked just like the dark-fixtures
installed at the casinos. The researchers inquired about these fixtures, and
were again regarded as ``paranoid'' by the management of this
and other establishments. No amount
of discussion with the various levels of management, privacy
committees, etc., brought them any sympathy.

Now some people like to be shot with darkons and others don't. Darkon
shooting is not always bad. Some people even smile when they are
being shot. So the darkon theoreticians cannot conclude that darkon
shooters are pure good or pure evil. And some people like being shot
some of the time and not at other times. This makes life quite
confusing for the darkon shooting hobbyist.

Thus, the darkon theoreticians concluded that darkon shooters carried
by human beings are fine because the recipient of the darkons may
express his/her preference to be shot or not -- the recipient could
express this preference to the source of the darkons -- another human
being. It is the dark-fixtures mounted on ceilings, or the like,
that had to be dealt with, and so, the darkon theoreticians pulled
their darkon launchers from their holsters, and began blasting darkons
at any dark-fixture they came across. After blasting a substantial
amount of darkon flux back into many of these darkon-emitting-fixtures,
they realized it was time to reload. Their darkon launchers
could only spray out a fixed number of
rounds
(e.g. rolls of 24 rounds or 36 rounds) per loading.
This was an important discovery in the field of darkon theory.
Even with computerized darkon launchers, which derive their
particles of darkness from sectors of emptiness, were limited
in their capacity. Using such a darkon launcher, one eventually
runs out of sectors of emptiness. While one may start out with
an initially full hard drive (full of empty sectors right after
being formatted), eventually the hard drive becomes empty of
empty sectors.

The researchers realized that they were fighting an unfair battle because the
buildings had an infinite supply of darkons coming down coaxial cables.
They realized that they would need antennas capable of picking up an
infinite supply of darkons from all over the world. A
world wide web
of darkon repeaters had the added advantage that no building owner
could ever demand that a darkon be sent back to its origin since its
origin would be unknown, even to the darkon theoreticians.

Summarizing:

There is no such thing as light, so the issue as to whether light
is a particle or wave is meaningless.

The appearance of lightness is brought on by the absence of particles
of darkness, called ``darkons''.

An absence of darkness can be created synthetically by causing
``holes'' (holes are the absence of electrons) to flow through a device
called a light-bulb.

A flow of the absence of electrons, which
causes the absence of darkness,
can be created by using a device called a ``battery''.

A battery has two sides, one marked ``plus'' (indicating a surPLUS
of holes) and the other marked ``minus''. The flow of the absence
of electrons that causes the absence of darkness begins at the ``plus''
side and moves toward the ``minus'' side.

The flow of the absence of electrons is eventually exhausted, and,
with some batteries (called ``rechargeable'') can be restored by
using the flow of dryness particles (absence of water)
up large turbines.

Darkness particles may come from a ``dark-fixture'' (e.g. one
mounted to a ceiling) or from
a personal darkon-shooter (known as a ``camera'').

This work has focused on the darkness particle, but a similar theory
has been discovered for the darkness wave. Strictly speaking, darkness
is neither a wave nor a particle, but, rather a ``wave-packet'', sometimes
called a ``wavelet'' for short.